NHS procurement hub saves £33m in two years

The NHS North West Collaborative Procurement Hub (NWCPH) saved £33 million over the past two years through aggregated spend and data management.

The hub was created in 2005 and controls £1.2 billion of spend across 39 trusts in north-west England.

Peter Akid, NWCPH chief executive, told Supplymanagement.com the savings came largely by establishing a firm understanding of which projects were underway or planned for each NHS trust and collaborating spend where possible.

"At any given time, there are a huge number of projects on the go and it was essential to keep on top of that. At the moment there are around 110 ongoing projects," he said.

Akid added that technology firm QlikTech's Qlickview system, rolled out through the trusts in January, has increased the speed of data collection and analysis and saved hours of management time.

This has allowed a standard approach to compiling the data from purchasing systems. Previously, employees at the hub would manually sort through spend data from each of the trusts.